Chapter 14
Iave
The scent of Kalani’s blood teased at my tongue, hiding the rotten scents of the abominations chasing us.
She was only a slight weight cradled in my arm against my chest where she was safe.
How could a woman this small next to my own bulky frame be this strong?
She hadn’t uttered a single sound of pain though my eyes told me she had four puncture marks lining her ankle.
Naga females were tough too in their own way.
They had to be, considering how much they fought each other.
That didn’t mean I hadn’t heard them complain about their aches and pains when other females couldn’t hear.
My last lover would weep over a broken claw, it had driven me so crazy, that two-facedness, that it had almost been a relief when the Queen cast me out.
My mate, my beautiful Goddess, she wasn’t making a single peep.
She just did what she could to help make our escape easier.
Shining as many of the lights as I’d given her over my shoulder to light up the narrow tunnel.
It worked, they weren’t entering that pool of light, too afraid of burning up in it to get closer.
Without that light… I wasn’t sure we would have made it.
I was fast, but so were they, and they were many.
The hazy purple light at the end of the tunnel was like a balm to my soul.
There it was, finally, daylight. Daylight meant safety from these creatures; daylight meant a way out.
When I darted through the opening into the outside, my nictitating membranes slid protectively over my eyes to help me handle the transition from light to dark.
“Oh shit, I thought this was a way out…” Kalani murmured as we left the dank, sticky tunnel and rushed out into a clearing.
So had I, but that’s not what it looked like.
We were outside, and the last sunlight of the day was brushing over the clearing we were in, but there was no way out.
Walls rose high all around the clearing; giving us a piece of the outside no bigger than a couple hundred square feet.
The clearing was enough to house a copse of trees and a small pond, the clear water fed by a little trickle of water coming from one wall.
The rock walls themselves rose close to two hundred feet everywhere, nearly straight down or even overhanging the place.
Hard to climb, especially with thin, easily torn skin.
Probably the only reason the zombie Naga hadn’t managed to ditch the caverns just yet to decimate anything alive on Serant’s surface.
Glancing over my shoulder I realized that the tunnel exit was crowded with salivating, eager, abominations.
The only thing holding them back was the sunlight that stretched across the dirt, but the sun was setting, so that wouldn’t hold them back for long.
Deep shadows had already formed directly across from the tunnel opening, once the sun dipped low enough, that shadow would stretch all the way across and then they would be on us in seconds.
“We’re going to have to climb,” I said grimly, eyeing the steep, near-vertical rock face with a little trepidation.
I was no Bitter Storm Naga, who would have been able to climb this in a heartbeat.
I was Thunder Rock, or at least, I used to be.
Thunder Rock was good at tracking and hunting, good at the woods and survival.
Climbing a sheer rock wall like that hadn’t been part of my daily routine.
I crossed the clearing, aiming for a section of the rock wall that looked rough and not quite as looming as other places.
It would have more handholds to work with; I hoped.
“Kalani, you’ll have to hang on yourself.
Can you do that?” I knew what her answer was going to be, and I had no doubt that she was going to manage.
“Yes, let me shift to your back,” she said calmly.
We made the transition quickly, my eyes restlessly roving from the rock face I needed to climb to the tunnel where the slavering horde was nearly shoving each other out into the fading light in their eagerness to get to us.
We didn’t have much time, in a minute, the shadow was going to reach them.
When Kalani was on my back, she would be the first target they’d aim for too; not on my watch.
She set her feet into the straps of the backpack I still wore, her arms clutched tightly around my neck.
That had to be painful with her injured, bleeding ankle, but she only hissed once when she put pressure on her limb.
As soon as she signaled that she was secure I leaped up, raising my body as high on my tail as I could go and grabbing for a set of handholds.
Then I was coiling my body, sliding it along the rock surface to find ways to wedge my coils tight enough for me to reach for the next handhold. We were going, not as fast as I’d like, but I was doing it and the path above me looked clear.
We’d gone up a good dozen feet when with victorious howls and shrieks, the horde was freed from their tunnel by the stretching shadow. With no hands free, Kalani couldn’t wield the light sources to our advantage and all she could do was urge me to climb faster. “They are almost here. Hurry, Iave.”
Then she cursed, which meant they’d reached the wall below us.
I didn’t risk looking down, urging my body to greater speed as I grappled the wall with my tail and leaped for the next handhold.
Once, Kalani’s injured foot impacted with the wall when I rushed.
She yelped in pain and more fresh blood tainted the air with its scent.
Below us, the zombies turned even more frenzied and when I risked a glance down I cursed too.
Some were trying to follow us up the wall, and while before, the damage to their flesh had stopped them, this time they were far too motivated to let it stop them.
Some of the creatures below us were more mangled than others.
Rotting, broken bodies that had no business even moving and yet they were, dragging themselves across the dirt with their bone-white claws.
I felt one set of those claws slash the tip of my tail when I wasn’t fast enough.
They were gaining because their long claws gave them an advantage when climbing.
Gritting my teeth against the pain and the slashes that followed, I lashed my tail sideways hard once, knocking several of them off the wall.
Then I put all my focus into climbing, dragging myself up the rocks by sheer willpower and grit.
This wasn’t going to get the best of me, I was strong, I could reach the top, even with my tail being torn to shreds by the chasing zombies.
What was it Kalani had said? Don’t let them bite me?
I really hoped they weren’t but I couldn’t be sure.
We were almost at the top, so close that when I reached for another handhold, my fingers curled over the lip of the rock wall.
Elation soared through me for a second; yes we were there!
Then an agonizing pain shot through my tail, claws pinning me through a fleshy part to the rock face.
“Kalani, climb up,” I ordered, freeing one hand to pull on her elbow.
She could make it to the top, that was all that mattered; that she’d make it to safety.
My Goddess did as I suggested with quick moves.
Using my shoulders and the straps of the backpack as footholds, she scaled me, and then the final bit of wall with no fear for how high up we were.
I breathed a sigh of relief when she scrambled over the top and out of reach of the zombie Naga still clinging to the rock with me.
She rose to her feet above me, leaning dangerously forward on her injured foot to look down into the pit, her expression grim.
She spoke but I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Then she swung her bow from her shoulder, aimed with an arrow, and let it fly.
A shriek that tapered off followed the hollow thud as her projectile struck.
Then there was a thump as a body hit the floor at the bottom of the cliff and the eager shrieks of the zombies down below that fell on Kalani’s kill.
She was magnificent, as always.
***
Kalani
Climbing six feet of rock, over Iave’s head and to the top of the cliff had been agonizing.
All that pain faded when I glanced down to check out the herd of zombies following us.
Damn it! Iave’s tail was one bloody, ragged mess and one tenacious zombie had impaled him with his claws to the rock.
He wouldn’t be able to move up or down without ripping those claws out.
I hesitated over which target to pick as I rushed to ready my bow.
Was I shooting the one that held Iave trapped?
Or one of the handful of tenacious fuckers that were almost at the top?
We couldn’t let a single one escape, I just knew that if even one got out, it would wreak havoc on this ecosystem.
Shooting first one, and then another of the malformed creatures down from the wall seemed like the better bet.
If I killed the one pinning Iave, the sudden extra weight might pull my mate off the wall with it; I couldn’t risk that.
Iave was strong, and he could survive a lot, but falling nearly two hundred feet followed by a swarm of those creatures? I didn’t like those odds.
Then Iave freed up one hand and yanked out his ax, moving his body in an agile curl along the rock face that seemed to defy gravity.
With one powerful move of his arm, he cut the claws embedded in his flesh just an inch above his scales.
Followed by a backswing that seamlessly caught the creature the claws belonged to in the skull.